The Cockleshell Heroes And The Most Courageous Raid of WW2

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Recording from Paddy Ashdown’s talk at CVHF on Tuesday, 25th June 2013.

This is the story of the remarkable canoe raid on German ships in Bordeaux harbour told by a man who himself served in the Special Boat Squadron. The plan was a suicidally daring one: to drop twelve Commandos at the mouth of the Gironde River and for them to paddle ‘cockleshell’ canoes right into Bordeaux harbour. There they were to sink the enemy ships at anchor. To do this they would have to survive terrifying tidal races, the heavily defended port, and then escape across the Pyrenees. In this compelling talk, Paddy Ashdown reveals some devastating new research that serves only to make the achievements of the ‘Cockleshell Heroes’ all the more remarkable.

STALINGRAD: Hunting the Reality of War

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Recording from Antony Beevor’s CVHF talk on Thursday, 27th June 2013.

Antony Beevor’s monumental book, Stalingrad, has been one of the most read and highly praised accounts of the Second World War to have been written in the past twenty-five years. It was also the book that ignited our fascination with the war anew, published, as it was, nearly a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union and drawing on previously unseen Russian archives. It was these archives, barely examined by historians, that revealed the depths of the brutality, depravations and horror of one of the most terrible battles in history. In this talk, Antony Beevor discusses this important turning-point in the war, his own search to unlock the truth about that terrible battle, and shares some of the heart-breaking stories he discovered and the lengths he went to in order to foil the guards watching over him in the Moscow archives.

Double Cross: The True Story Of The D-Day Spies

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Recording from Ben Macintyre’s talk, ‘Double Cross: The True Story of The D-Day Spies’ for CVHF, Sunday, 30th June 2013.

D-Day, 6 June 1944, the turning point of the Second World War, was a victory of arms. But it was also a triumph for a different kind of operation: one of deceit. At the heart of the deception was the ‘Double Cross System’, a team of double agents whose bravery, treachery, greed and inspiration succeeded in convincing the Nazis that Calais and Norway, not Normandy, were the targets of the 150,000-strong Allied invasion force. These were not conventional warriors, but their masterpiece of duplicity saved thousands of lives. In this talk, bestselling author, Ben MacIntyre, tells the astonishing tale of Operation Fortitude, the D-Day deception plan, recounted with his usual encyclopaedic knowledge and driest of wits. This is a talk for all fans of espionage and derring-do.

Henry III

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Recording from David Carpenter’s talk ‘Henry III’ at CVHF on Tuesday, 25th June 2013.

The Festival is always keen to open eyes to lesser-known episodes and characters from history, which is why we included an event about Henry III, the son of King John and one of our longest-reigning but least known monarchs. To talk on this fascinating man, we asked Professor David Carpenter, one of the world’s leading experts on King Henry’s reign. Much of his reign was spent fighting the barons over Magna Carta, yet under Henry, England prospered. He also made Westminster his seat of government and expanded the abbey. David Carpenter is a superb lecturer and brings his deep knowledge and passion for the subject in a talk that reveals a critical but often forgotten period of our history.

IQ2 Debate: Ancients v Moderns

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Ancient History Matters More Than Modern History. A recording from the IQ2 Debate at CVHF on 29th June 2013 with Boris Johnson, Tom Holland, Dan Snow and Jeremy Black. Chair: Edward Stourton.

What have the Romans ever done for us? Monty Python’s eternal question is put to the vote in this year’s IQ2 debate. This dazzling cast of historians pitted their knowledge and wit against each other in arguing whether ancient or modern history is more instructive and relevant to the times we live in. In this blizzard of repartee in our second, annual IQ2 debate, the audience got to speak and vote on some of the critical questions of history.

The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession

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A recording from Andrea Wulf’s CVHF talk on Sunday, 30th June 2013.

One January morning in 1734, cloth merchant Peter Collinson hurried down to the docks at London’s Custom House to collect cargo just arrived from John Bartram in the American colonies. But it was not bales of cotton that awaited him, but plants and seeds… Over the next forty years, Bartram would send hundreds of American species to England, where Collinson was one of a handful of men who would foster a national obsession and change the gardens of Britain forever: Philip Miller, author of the bestselling Gardeners Dictionary; the Swede Carl Linnaeus, whose standardised botanical nomenclature popularised botany; the botanist-adventurer Joseph Banks and his colleague Daniel Solander who both explored the strange flora of Tahiti and Australia on Captain Cook’s Endeavour. In this charming and utterly fascinating talk, Andrea Wulf tells the story of these men – friends, rivals, enemies, united by a passion for plants. History and gardening meet in this telling of the birth of Britain’s green-fingered obsession.

Three Kings: How Alfred the Great & His Family Made England

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Recording from Michael Wood’s CVHF talk on Friday, 28th June 2013.

Michael Wood is one of our most enduringly popular television historians. Although he has crossed continents and travelled seas to tell us the stories of ancient civilisations and even Nazi cults, his first love in history was the Anglo-Saxons. In this talk, he tells the amazing story of Alfred the Great and his family, a tale that takes us across the British Isles in the Viking Age, to Rome and beyond, and to the Battle of Brunanburh, when England finally became one.

People’s DNA: A People’s History

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Recording from Alistair Moffat’s talk ‘People’s DNA: A People’s History at CVHF on Thursday, 27th June 2013.

Hidden inside all of us – every human being on Earth – is the story of our ancestry. Printed on our DNA are the origins of our lineages, the time in history and prehistory when they arose, and the epic journeys people have made across the globe. Based on exciting new research involving the most wide-ranging sampling of DNA ever made in Britain, Alistair Moffat will show how all of us who live on these islands are immigrants. The last ice age erased any trace of more ancient inhabitants, and the ancestors of everyone who now lives in Britain came here after the glaciers retreated and the land greened once more. This talk is about an epic, often profoundly moving and astonishing, journey. From Africa to caves in southern France and across Europe, Alistair Moffat will reveal a very different and new history of Britain.

The Great Adventurer: Patrick Leigh Fermor

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A recording from the talk ‘The Great Adventurer: Patrick Leigh Fermor by Artemis Cooper at CVHF on Thursday 27th June 2013.

Patrick Leigh Fermor led an extraordinary life. A war hero whose exploits in Crete are legendary, he was also widely acclaimed as one of the greatest travel writers of our times, notably for his books about his walk across pre-war Europe, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. He was a self-educated polymath, a lover of Greece and the best company in the world. Artemis Cooper has drawn on years of interviews and conversations with Paddy and his closest friends as well as having complete access to his archives. Her beautifully crafted biography became a best-seller and was widely praised. Here she tells Paddy Leigh Fermor’s story and explains why this man of such extraordinary gifts was such a wonderful personality and why he inspired such passionate friendships.

This year Artemis Cooper returns to CVHF on 26 June. Her talk, Cairo in the War, 1939 – 1945 she will relate the progress and fortunes of the war in the desert against the background of legendary parties and a hotbed of spies and intrigue.

Hugh Trevor-Roper

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Hugh_Trevor-RoperHugh Trevor-Roper was one of the most famous and admired British historians of the twentieth century.

His account of the Last Days of Hitler, based on the most exciting (and dangerous) sort of investigative journalism, shortly after the end of the war, is a classic; while his essays, reviews and letters (many edited by Richard Davenport-Hines) are gems of historical insight, imagination and literary style.

Notoriously, he authenticated the forged ‘Hitler Diaries’ – hoisted by his own petard, many said, in light of his scathing attacks on colleagues who erred. Yet the ‘Hitler Diaries’ debacle was in fact a tragic mistake which Trevor-Roper tried to correct before The Times splashed its scoop and his reputation took a body blow.

Either way, the work, the life and the ideas of Hugh Trevor-Roper greatly outweigh this single episode. He was an Oxford historian (Regius Professor no less) when such roles had influence beyond the ‘dreaming spires’ of that ancient university.

Married, late in life, to Field Marshal Haig’s daughter, he was a member of the establishment who ran Harold Macmillan’s campaign to become Chancellor of Oxford and later explained, politely, to Margaret Thatcher that she was entirely wrong about German re-unification.

Above all he was very funny, with a ironic and irreverent view of humanity that could rival Gibbon.

His letters, which have been edited by Richard Davenport-Hines, are as amusing and enlightening as this brilliant man himself.

The CVHF talk, ‘The Five Lives of Hugh Trevor-Roper’ by Richard Davenport-Hines is on 26th June

richard-davenporthinesRichard Davenport-Hines is co-editor of One Hundred Letters from Hugh Trevor-Roper, and previously edited Trevor-Roper’s Letters from Oxford (addressed to Bernard Berenson) and his Wartime Journals. In his CVHF talk on 26th June, Richard Davenport-Hines will show how these letters reveal him as a historian, a controversialist, a public intellectual, a ‘backroom boy’ in British intelligence, a connoisseur, a traveller and a countryman.